Beauty Basics - The Ways of Eyeshadow

July 8, 2015

Eyeshadow is the most complex part of makeup. There are quite a few terms for the parts of the eye. When you’re new to makeup and you watch tutorials or see posts on Pinterest about eyeshadow they talk about tightlining, and the brow bone, and the crease.

Every little part of the eye area has a name. In this post I’m going to go over the different names and where they are referring to.

Eyeshadow is one of my favorite things about makeup because you can do anything with it. You can wear one color or a bunch of colors. I personally stick to a minimum of 4 or 5 colors depending on how much I blend and whether they are bright or nude shades. I love how expressive you can be with eyeshadow!

So let’s get into this!

Eyeshadow Terms:

Outer Corner

Inner Corner

Outer Lid

Lid

Crease

Brow Bone

Tightline

Waterline

Underline

Outer Corner

This one is kind of obvious. It is the outside corner of your eyes.

Inner Corner

Again obvious. The inner corner of your eyes. People usually put a light shade or white on the inner corner to highlight.

Outer Lid

This is the outer half, or so, of your eye lid. This is typically where the darker shade goes on a smokey eye.

Lid

This is just referring to the lid in general. People typically apply the lightest shade to their whole lid as a sort of base. They would then apply the outer lid color over it.

Crease

This is right where your lid creases. It is the area right where you eye ball meets the bone. When your eyes are fully open you usually don’t see this part of your lid but it creates a cool shadow effect to apply color to your crease and it looks great when you look down or close your eyes.

Brow Bone

The brow bone is referring to the highpoint of the brow bone that is just under the arch of your brow. People usually highlight this area to make it look higher.

Tightline

Tightlining is when you apply eyeliner to the inner top lash line.

Waterline

The waterline is the inner bottom lash line.

Underline

This is a term that I use to describe applying eyeshadow on the bottom lash line as eyeliner.

I hope this made sense. And I hope this helps you the next time you are watching a beauty tutorial or see an eyeshadow how-to on Pinterest.

This is a post in my Beauty Basics series. I’m breaking down the basics of makeup and beauty for beginners. I’m not a makeup vet but I’m not a beginner either. You can check out my other Beauty Basics posts here.

If you have any questions or concerns feel free to message me. If you liked this post or topic let me know in the comments below. Much Love!

Disclaimer: I AM NOT a professional makeup artist. You could say I am a self taught makeup artist as I have taught myself a lot though trial and error and playing with makeup. I have researched a lot of things on makeup over the past few years. I’m not claiming to know everything but I think I’ve got the basics down and want to make learning them easier for anyone just starting to get into makeup. I am not a newbie anymore but I’m not makeup vet either.Photo Credit: Cover Photo - Background from Make it Create and edited by me.